Democrat Rep. Glenn Ivey became the first congressperson from his party to publicly suggest Chuck Schumer should be ousted from his post as the party’s leader in the Senate for helping pass a Republican spending plan.
“I respect Chuck Schumer,” Ivey, who represents a district with a large number of federal workers, told a town hall in Forestville, Maryland on Tuesday. “I think he had a great, long-standing career. But I’m afraid that it may be time for the Senate Democrats to get a new leader.”
Ivey and all but one House Democrat voted against the Republican spending plan, but in the Senate nine Democrats including Schumer—and one independent who caucuses with them—helped advance the GOP-crafted stopgap bill, allowing it to pass in a later vote.
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Schumer argued his concession was to prevent Medicaid and other federal funding from being shut off by President Donald Trump’s administration.
But that has done little to calm furor among Democratic colleagues, progressive groups, and members of the party base who have accused him of handing Trump and his cost-cutting lieutenant Elon Musk free rein over government spending for the rest of the fiscal year.
Some House Democrats were so upset that they reportedly encouraged Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who called Schumer’s vote a “tremendous mistake,” to mount a primary challenge against him.
While not calling for his ouster, Rep. Jasmine Crockett told CNN Sunday that Senate Democrats should “sit down and take a look and decide whether or not Chuck Schumer is the one to lead in this moment.”
Axios reported Tuesday that, even with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries trying to shore up support for Schumer, members of the caucus remain livid with their party’s Senate leader.
“His popularity is hovering somewhere between Elon Musk and the Ebola virus,” one congressperson told the news outlet.
Among the most stinging criticism of Schumer was former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s suggestion that he gave away leverage for “nothing,” though she affirmed her support for his leadership.
A Quinnipiac poll released last week—which showed 32 percent of respondents would blame Democrats for a government shutdown while a combined 53 percent would have blamed Republicans (31 percent for congressional Republicans and 22 percent for Trump)—gave additional ammunition to critics within Schumer’s party.
Calls for Schumer’s resignation have also come from the party grassroots. The liberal organizing group Indivisible called on him to step aside after he helped the Republican funding plan pass.
“I think the response to that will be widespread acclaim and appreciation, a resurgence of energy behind the Democratic Party, and a belief that they’re actually taking seriously the concerns of rank-and-file members,” Ezra Levin, Indivisible’s founder, told The Christian Science Monitor of a potential Schumer resignation.
“In the absence of that, I think the party has a serious fracture.”
While Schumer cancelled a book tour amid the backlash, he has embarked on a series of media appearances to defend his decision and standing.
“I’m the best leader for the Senate,” he told CBS News on Tuesday, before joining the co-hosts of ABC’s The View to insist: “I should be the leader.”
“I knew when I made this decision I’d get a lot of flak,” he told MSNBC later in the day. “I’m a smart politician, I can read what people want.”
Schumer added that, while he conceded the continuing resolution he voted for was a “terrible bill,” he believed a government shutdown would have been “20 times worse.“
He argued that was because, during a shutdown the “executive branch has absolute power to determine what is essential” and said that would have handed fiscal decision making solely to the Trump administration, which he described as filled with “antigovernment fanatics” and “vicious nihilists.“
Schumer told The New York Times on Sunday that he believes the right path forward is to get Trump’s approval rating under 40 percent.
He claimed that, in Trump’s first administration, “when he went below 40 percent in the polls, the Republican legislators started working with us.”
An NBC News poll released Sunday showed the Democratic Party with just a 27 percent favorability rating, while a similar poll conducted for CNN found 29 percent of respondents said they viewed the party positively.
However, three of five recent polls of a generic congressional ballot compiled by RealClearPolitics show the Democrats leading, with one showing a slim Republican lead and the other a dead heat.
That suggests the party could be positioned to pick up gains in the 2026 midterm elections, which could give Democrats more leverage over the GOP, which controls both houses of Congress and the executive branch.
